What was the benefit you were trying to achieve in buying the properties in a trust with the other parties? Why didn't you just keep ownership seperate? Seems like keeping ownership separate would of given your much more flexibility and still allowed you to partner with the other couple down the track to develop or sell if you wanted to.

In terms of management of the units, being that there is 4 units why don't you have it setup so 1 couple manages 2 units and the other couple manages 2 units. Then for your 2 units you organise a property manager? You would therefor accept recieving less income for your side of things at the benefit of having less stress/time wasted. Hell even get all 4 units managed and you wear the management costs seems like a more appealing idea.

I think FIFO will be a big problem especially for places on the east coast where it is relatively easy/quick to transport people back to main hubs/capital cities, as it's what most workers will want.

There has been a couple of articles recently which have focused on how companies have been starting to offer more social benefits as a way to differentiate rather than just financial benefits (as its what's being demanded by some workers).

We have heard about a massive skills shortage in the resources industry i.e. those that are willing to live remotely pretty much already do. The only options really, to attract more people to live remotely is to pay substantially more than what is currently on offer (which has diminishing returns) or offer FIFO (lifestyle), especially back to city's such as Sydney/Melbourne (even then you will have people who still just wont do it).

As demand increases mining companies will have to offer even greater incentives to attract workers to their mines, their is no point the mining company choosing  DIDO > FIFO to save themselves a buck if at the end of the day is just puts a higher cost on the worker and its not the lifestyle they want to live, they will just choose to work elsewhere and the company will have no worker.

Choosing to live/work at really remote mines barely even stacks up financially now (taking into account the higher cost of living), and then you still have to take into consideration the lifestyle hit.

That is true, it depends on the druation of the marriage. This is apparently broken down into short marriages & long. Short is generally <4 Years with long being >4 Years, so it doesn't take long for the wealth transfer to occur.

This is also true but once a marriage >4yrs then a lot of the conditions are eroded away (i.e. contribution has little weighting, etc).

For longer marriages 50% generally is the starting point, and variations are made from there, i.e. if they have a child and divorce and the mother gets custody of the child then is likely she will get more than 50%.

The point I was making about the grandparents trust is, if say the father was the sole remaining beneficiary, it may be argued that the assets should be treated as if he owned them (essentialy he does).
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A trustee just manages the trust (investment decisions, regulation, etc) following within the guidelines of the trust, the appointor just appoints them. The assets are owned by the trust and the trust has beneficiaries.
If your father was sole beneficiary then it could be argued that they are his assets. If it is seen that a trust has been setup for the purpose of transferring assets from the marriage, i.e. swindling his wife, then I believe it would be challenged successfully that the assets should be considered as property of the marriage.

Was it a proper legal document? and did both parties recieve independent legal advice? Also was the agreement considered fair? these will be things taking into account by a judge when deciding over the validity of the agreement. Also if they had a child, then the agreement is likely nullified. Any major material changes means a new agreement must be formed.

For the most part I think that is probably true.But I think a large part of it comes down to who are the beneficiaries and how many. If he was sole beneficiary I wonder if It could be challenged, (because it could be considered as an income source of which he gets 100% of distributions). When there are varied people as beneficiaries I think it's more likely safe.

Just my thoughts anyway.

What I would like to see happen:

State Government Remove Stamp Duty & rely on changes to land tax to make up the short fall, this should reduce land banking/property barrens & would allow a better flowing economy with more mobile workers.

Remove Negative Gearing & the massive speculation in housing (it should be predominantly used to live in and raise a family, with investing being secondary). Overtime property value & rent  trends will mate back up to create reasonable rental yields which will still mean investment, but not rampant speculation. It should be stable/consistent returns.

The only place I could see a benefit to Negative Gearing remaining is to drive the creation of new stock.

With Negative Gearing & Easy credit its just to easy for people to keep bidding up property on other peoples dime. Eventhough a small percentage of housing investors do their research and make good well informed decisions on what property to invest in. I think there is a large majority that invest in housing for "Negative Gearing" and don't really look at whether the investment is good or not in its own right.

Keep it so that Foreign Investors may only purchase to live in and must divest 'X' years after leaving the country.

I don't think high property prices really benefits anyone in the end, it just leads to a need to keep paying higher wages making us less competitive with other countries around the world. It means that new people into the market, our daughters, sons, grandchildren are going to have to work harder, longer and contribute even more of their income to property (which in the case of existing property is almost completely 'unproductive' money) which will mean a decreased standard of living. Also that money is being taken away from other industries (tourism, retail, agriculture, etc..).

What happens when the mining boom ends? what will we export then? all we are doing is making ourselves so big and expensive that we will price ourselves out of the world market.
Overall we are better off with cheaper houses & lower wages. Housing is so disproportionatly high compared to all our other living costs (food, cars, entertainment, electricity, etc..)

My opinion is to be careful with any comparisons of Gladstone to places like Port Headland / Karrathra, they are trully remote & out of the way. Gladstone has another major city in Rockhampton only being ~1.5Hrs away, with little town's along the way.

They are already much larger established towns in their own right, which will mean less issues/costs with building. Materials / Workforce can be sourced readily from furhter up and down the coast also.

Also with Gladstone + The Surrounding area, land release appears to be much more plentiful.

I think price comparisons with those towns would prove pointless as they don't have the same fundamentals.

The really High Voltage Powerlines, especially on towers have a massive easement, which means you could have a large swab of your land that you are unable to build on (can get away with temporary structures, e.g. car ports etc) but they can be demolished and and removed at your cost. I can't exactly remember the distance, but think rotating the tower horizontally and that should give you an indication.

British Buyer, what are your current thoughts on the foreclosure fraud issues mentioned of past ? (or possibly even current?) Are you now satisified that banks have done proper(bullet-tight) due-dilligence on the properties they are listing/have relisted? If not what do you intend to do to protect yourself.

Also what are people's thoughts & feelings about the US & QE2? Will this affect the timing of when you decide to buy?